Herring-Cole Hall is a historic institutional building located at St. Lawrence University

St. Lawrence University

St. Lawrence University is a four-year liberal arts college located in the village of Canton in Saint Lawrence County, New York, United States. It has roughly 2300 undergraduate and 100 graduate students, about equally split between male and female....

 in Canton

Canton (village), New York

Canton is a village in St. Lawrence County, New York, United States. The village is centrally located in both the town of Canton and the county of St. Lawrence. The population was 5,882 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of St. Lawrence County...

, St. Lawrence County, New York

St. Lawrence County, New York

St. Lawrence County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2010 census, the population was 111,944. The county seat is Canton. The county is named for the Saint Lawrence River, which in turn was named for the Catholic saint on whose Feast day the river was discovered by...

. It is a -story structure built of Potsdam sandstone

Potsdam Sandstone

The Potsdam Sandstone is a geologic formation of late Cambrian to early Ordovician age found in upstate New York and northern Vermont. A well-cemented sandstone of nearly pure quartz, in the 19th century it was widely used in construction and in refractory linings for iron furnaces.-Name and type...

. It was built in two stages and its T-shaped plan is due to the attachment of the Cole Reading Room (1902) at a right angle to the Herring Library (1869). It is located within the St. Lawrence University-Old Campus Historic District

St. Lawrence University-Old Campus Historic District

St. Lawrence University-Old Campus Historic District is a national historic district located on the campus of St. Lawrence University at Canton in St. Lawrence County, New York. The district includes eight contributing buildings and two contributing objects...

.

Popular campus lore maintains that the building is haunted by one or more sprits or ghosts. The building plays host to the occasional séance

Séance

A séance is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word "séance" comes from the French word for "seat," "session" or "sitting," from the Old French "seoir," "to sit." In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "une séance de cinéma"...

 for this reason, and is a favorite location for local meditation circles, though this stems from its acoustics, lighting, age, atmosphere, and isolation.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

in 1974.